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Contemplating ‘welcoming’ refugees? Pay attention to Amarillo, TX

Posted by Ann Corcoran on June 16, 2016

Amarillo was in the news this week when a former refugee was shot dead in a Walmart store after taking hostages. If you are looking for excitement in your boring towns and cities, follow the Amarillo example. If you kind of like your peaceful all American town, then you better think twice about becoming a new refugee resettlement site. (And, make all the political noise you can when the feds come to town with their contractors).

Harpole testified April 21 before the state Senate’s Committee on Health and Human Services, which held a hearing on refugee resettlement

Amarillo has been getting refugees for years and years so that is why they are now overloaded and stressed. I suspect early on, the federal contractors snuck into town (they always set up the seed communities with the least amount of publicity they can get away with) and no one caught on until the schools were overloaded and multiculturalism had destabilized the resident population.

Before seeing Leo Hohmann’s detailed report on Amarillo see our post earlier this year that is turning in to one of the top posts of the year, click here.

A man who took two co-workers hostage at an Amarillo, Texas, Walmart Tuesday was a Muslim refugee from Somalia, and that fact came as no surprise to those who track the federal government’s robust refugee resettlement program.

Amarillo is bursting at the seams with foreign refugees, from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and its mayor has pleaded repeatedly with the government to stop sending refugees to his city.

But they keep coming.

The schools are stretched, and the local police department is having a hard time getting a handle on the rising crime.

On Tuesday, it was just another example. Mohammad Moghaddan, a Somali refugee, was shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies after he had taken two Walmart employees hostage.

Moghaddan, 54, was a current employee of the store, and his actions were quickly declared “a case of work place violence” by the sheriff’s office. The hostage taker, armed with a handgun, was shot dead by a SWAT team as terrified shoppers were ushered out of the store.

The city’s mayor has been on a crusade since 2011 to get the U.S. State Department, working with the United Nations, to put a damper on the number of refugees flooding into his city.

And, again for you in prospective ‘welcoming’ towns remember the message from Amarillo—once you go down this road and open an office in your town there is no slowing the flow later. Just ask another mayor, Ted Gatsas in Manchester, NH who like Mayor Harpole has tried to persuade Washington to stop sending so many, to no avail.

See our Amarillo archive which extends back to 2008. This May 2008 post may be our earliest realization that Amarillo was being changed by BIG MEAT in need of cheap immigrant labor or, because the federal government makes it attractive (financially beneficial) for them to hire non-Hispanic laborers (hmmmm?), see here. BTW, in a quick look around I saw that there are 11 meatpacking companies near Amarillo. Why is it the job of the US State Dept. to provide laborers for processing plants, that is what I want to know!

Thank you for keeping us informed. I think the Syrian refugees are coming to Phoenix now. This past month I saw FB posting of people involved in the resettlement asking for clothing or furniture donations to set up the apartments for refugees. How can we know how many are coming to Phoenix ?

“This ruling is a strong rebuke of unconstitutional efforts to block refugee resettlement. It sends the clear message to other states that such attempts are not only un-American, they are contrary to the law and will fail in court,” said Cecilia Wang of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented a nonprofit resettlement organization in the Texas case.

It was our old friend the IRC
Excerpt: The suit, filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, alleges that the federal government and the International Rescue Committee have violated federal law by not consulting with the state in advance and cooperating with state officials.

bellsparadesaid

I feel much sympathy for the people (victims) who have all these ‘illegal arrivals/gimmigrants/bullets on two legs, arrive on their doorstep. This will happen to us in Australia as well, sometime down the track. I fear for my neighbourhood and my street because as an ageing woman, how can I fight these un-desirables off? Before 1970, multiculturalism worked very well in Australia but after 1970, it started to go downhill. One of our past Prime Ministers, in the 1970s, started to let the Lebanese in and the Asian boat people in. That was the beginning of our darkest hour. But the planners have been beavering away at this since the 1880s and beyond and they are winning. But one day, the White Race will again rise up again (but not in my time) and then they will take back what was theirs but will have a lot of repairs to do as these aliens are breaking down everything, that has been built up.